In order to increase our chances of preventing viruses from entering our network, or being spread to other computers outside our network, we are blocking several attachment file types from incoming/outgoing internet email messages. This does not affect on-campus e-mails. Files that end in the following extensions will be removed from e-mail messages:

• .pif
• .vbs
• .scr
• .bat
• .com
• .cmd
• .exe

Remember this does affect outgoing e-mail as well. If you need to send someone a valid file with one of these extensions, you should rename the file with a different extension before sending it and instruct the recipient to rename it after they receive it.

If you receive an e-mail and it says "a password protected zip file was blocked," that occurred because some of the current viruses are spread by using that type of file. The password to open the zip file is included in the message itself. When the zip file is opened, the computer becomes infected. We are only blocking password protected zip files, not regular zip files.